RAIN

WINTER 2013 COLLECTION

When I get a second I want to put together videos for every collection we've released. I've received emails from a few of you asking for a list of every shirt we've ever made so that you can find them and own them all. This is our Winter 2013 Collection:

ROADTRIP TO PHOENIX

I've been obsessed lately with making music on garageband. I used to be really into making music, until the day we started Akumu Ink. Ever since then I haven't made a sound. Playing around with garageband for a few seconds got me really excited to just make background music for our videos which were lacking consistency. We were also not making any videos because we didn't have music, so it was a vicious cycle of not doing anything. But now with just an iphone I can do it all!

So here is our drive to Phoenix when we were going to Phoenix Comiccon. We saw a ton of windmills on the way, almost like a graveyard for miles. We also saw the Cabazon Dinosaurs from my favorite movies The Wizard and Pee Wee's Big Adventure.

LENORE

A combination of inspirations made this shirt. For a long time I wanted to create an abstract woman's face with ravens coming out of her hair. This was my attempt. We have a very limited amount of these shirts left in our online shop. If you like this image, I wouldn't wait to long to get this as we're not going to restock it.

SCRATCHING PT.1

5 of our Kickstarter backers purchased a "sketch" of themselves as the little boy holding the balloon. So we thought we could have some fun with this and turned it into a scratchboard piece. Working on 2 out of the 5 pieces right now.

UNTIL THEY DIED

STRINGS ATTACHED

While trying to come up with a Pinnochio inspired design this was drawn into my sketchbook. I like the idea of the two marionette's reaching out for each other, wanting to be together, but limited and bound by their strings.

SAN DIEGO COMICCON

While you're at Comic-Con International this week: Drop by and check out our friends at Mex-Expressions in Old Town San Diego (2505 San Diego Ave). They have a bunch of our latest tshirts and tank tops.

Hopefully we'll be at Comiccon next year with our own booth. We've been on the waiting list for 5 years now o_o

BACK TO THE FUTURE IN CONCERT

Being a new resident to California, it's always amazing to discover something that I would have never experienced back in Montreal. I luckily heard on the radio that for the 30th anniversary of Back to the Future, an orchestra would be playing the score while the movie played on a big screen at the Hollywood Bowl. I had no idea what to expect, but when we got there it was better than anything I could have imagined.

Thousands of fans of the classic sci-fi movie all climbed the hill towards the event with picnic baskets, and wine bottles. The Hollywood Bowl was full, easily 10,000 people enjoyed the performance that night. It was an amazing experience to see this movie with other fans of the movie. Everyone laughed at every joke, and cheered for Marty and his dad's successes. If you get a chance to experience something like this, please take it.

Here is a photo an hour before the performance. And check out our videos below of the orchestra performing the music. So Good!

SUMMER 2015 PHOTOSHOOT

Since moving to California we've taken over photographing our models. We really wanted to be in control of the overall look of Akumu Ink again. We felt that hiring outside photographers weren't really relaying our message that well. We're not an average tshirt company, and I think it's noticeable through our lookbook shots that we have a very unique style. The last time we were in control of an Akumu Ink photoshoot was back in 2011. Thanks to the models: Lina Bones & Kyle Loerzel. Check out all our lookbook shots for Summer 2015 here.

5 FREE PINS

We received a test print yesterday for our book. This is just to test out what the colors will look like and how the paper will feel like in the final print.

All the pages below have been modified or completed since I sent out this file a week ago, so the final book will look so much better. Just a few more edits and we will send all files to the printer on Monday.

TEST PRINT

We received a test print yesterday for our book. This is just to test out what the colors will look like and how the paper will feel like in the final print.

All the pages below have been modified or completed since I sent out this file a week ago, so the final book will look so much better. Just a few more edits and we will send all files to the printer on Monday.

Currently we're working on prepping our files to be sent to the printer on Monday. We spent the last few days polishing every page to our standards. Double checking ever word, every character's expression, every color. We want this to be as perfect as we can make it.

PREPPING BOOK FOR PRINTER

We've been working nonstop on getting this book ready on time. Amongst our crazy amounts of comic conventions each other weekend, we are actually on time!

Currently we're working on prepping our files to be sent to the printer on Monday. We spent the last few days polishing every page to our standards. Double checking ever word, every character's expression, every color. We want this to be as perfect as we can make it.

I even went back in to redraw some pages (including the cover) so that the style would match all the way through. This is going to be such a fun item to have once it's printed. We really look forward to receiving the printed copies and teasing you with photos once they arrive.

Below is a side by side comparison of an old page (on the left), and the new redrawn version on the right.

DEATH CARD

This design has been in the back of my mind for a long time. I've always wanted to create some Tarot Card shirts but could never figure it out. We then decided to create Death using our original Tokyo Chan character and everything fell into place. Only after creating the Dead Riding Hood design could we have gone this route with the design.

ICE SCREAM

One of my favorite designs from this collection is Ice Scream. I came up with the idea of just drawing the ice cream cone after having this weird idea of a skeleton holding an oversized cone...basically a weak design. I then just sat at my computer for 1 to 2 hours and completed this image from start to finish. The colors on this shirt are super bright and fun. I'm really excited about it as a summer shirt.

We met Joe Rogan after his stand up show a few months back. It was a surreal moment as I've listened to his podcasts back when I printed our shirts by hand in Montreal. Here is the post about it. Seeing him wearing our shirts on his podcast is even crazier!

JOE ROGAN PODCAST

We met Joe Rogan after his stand up show a few months back. It was a surreal moment as I've listened to his podcasts back when I printed our shirts by hand in Montreal. Here is the post about it. Seeing him wearing our shirts on his podcast is even crazier!

It just makes me think that this little business we started 7 years ago from our spare bedroom actually has a real lasting future. We're so happy to have made it this far, but what's more important is that we can continue to grow doing what we love.

CATWOMAN SKETCH

NEW PINS

After about 8 months of not wanting to go back to Staples (because the person working the copy center was too incompetent to print out my files correctly), I finally tried my luck and surprisingly had excellent service from a new employee! Which means we will be able to offer pins on our website and at conventions again. So we will test out some new pins at this weekend's Denver Comiccon and see how that goes. Depending on the reaction we will start incorporating them onto our website.

MAY COMICCONS

The next 2 weeks are going to be brutal. Two cons back to back with a day off between to repack for the next show. We're excited to go to these two new cons as we've never been there before. Denver and Phoenix here we come!

CHUCKY SKETCH

OUR BOOK IS FUNDED!

Our Kickstarter project was completely funded as of yesterday! There is still 15 days to go so hopefully we can get a few more orders in so that we can offer everyone some fun extras (image below) like getting a dust jacket made, a bookmark, and the funnest of all is if we get $8,000 in funding we'll go as far to make the tshirt glow in the dark! Of course if we blew past $8,000 we would easily consider making another book. We have another completely different idea that we'd love to possibly tackle, but we're shelving for now.

After being funded I was super excited and inspired and drew up 2 new pages. I figured out a more scratchy/'child-like' style which I plan on using throughout the entire book. Possibly even going back and updating the other 4 pages I already made. Check them out below:

BLEEDING HEART

Lastly this month we introduce The Bleeding Heart. A take on our earliest design called Beloved, back when we designed very generic objects. This one included the scratchy style we've become known for as well as a hidden skeleton key to make the design more interesting. A lot of experimenting in this collection.

UNSEEN, UNHEARD, UNSPOKEN

Taking on a really old Akumu Ink design called The Juggler, I wanted to see what this design would look like now with our current style. It's now called Unseen, Unheard, Unspoken. I had also been kicking around the idea of a "Hear no evil, see no evil, say no evil" design and thought this would be a nice combination. The thought of having to choose one of the three, reminded my of the Mayor from Nightmare Before Christmas with his two different faces/emotions.

INK & FIRE

One of my favorite designs this season is Ink & Fire. Based off our Geisha design from our first collection when we rebranded Akumu Ink in 2011. The original design was completely forced out of the necessity to create quantity over quality in a very short period of time.

This new version is giving justice to the concept in which the dragon tattoo actually comes to life off the geisha's body. We tried something a little different with the colors and they just came out perfect on this print. We're reprinting this design (as I have a ton of new ideas for our next collection), so whatever is available on the website right now is what we'll have. Not restocking.

AMBUSHED

New this month is our very limited Ambushed print. This design is an important one for me. As it's a throwback to a tshirt design I drew for a school project in college many years before ever even thinking of starting a tshirt company. My style was very different back then, and I would constantly wonder what kind of a job I would have in the future, surely not something where I could be myself. Luckily meeting Aldora and creating our own company, I could make art without holding back in any way. All of you buying our shirts allow us to continue. There's no way I would have done any of this on my own, or have become remotely known for this style of artwork. So, thanks to those who buy this shirt, its very special to me.

CALGARY EXPO 2015

Our fourth straight comiccon in a row, and Calgary did not disappoint us whatsoever. We brought a ton of new designs to the show and you guys gobbled them up like we were giving them away! Apologies to those that wanted to buy certain designs, but by the second day of the show we were already sold out of many sizes. A million 'thank yous' Calgary, we look forward to coming back next year!

Also got to hang out with my cousin and his soon to be wife who also lives in Calgary. We had a really great time hanging out with them. You might have even seen him hanging out in our booth on Sunday.

JUST ANOTHER BIRTHDAY TEASER VIDEO

I had a little bit of time today to finally finish the teaser video for our upcoming kickstarter project. We were hoping to be live this week, but the longest part of the process is making the kickstarter video. And since it's our busiest time with conventions right now we're trying to find the time to piece it together. We're hoping to get the recording done tomorrow, and I'll edit when we get back from Calgary to hopefully post Tuesday or Wednesday (April 21st-22nd). We'll keep you updated as we get closer to launching, as the first 30 early birds will get to benefit from a discount and signed/numbered copies.

NOT ALONE

Not Alone is one of those random fun designs I came up with. In the same vein as Umami or Never Say Die. I liked the playfulness of designing the words to remove a word and completely change the sentence. I'm personally not good at coming up with sayings on shirts, but when something fits our aesthetic I love to try it out.

SECRET JOKER BAG

We printed a limited amount of secret Joker bags that we will bring with us to the next set of comic conventions. Based off of the Joker sketch I drew last week. These bags are NOT for sale, but are a gift to exclusive customers. Come by our booth at Megacon in Florida to get one for yourself.

WILLY WONKA SKETCH

My Weekly Sketch 13/52: Willy Wonka (1971). This was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Willy Wonka was this crazy magical man, but rewatching it as an adult shows Willy Wonka to be much more jaded and withdrawn. The songs in this version of the movie are so good and haunt my mind.

DONATION DROP OFF

Here is the final count of shirts we dropped off for charity yesterday with Together We Rise (a local non-profit organization helping children in foster care). This month couldn't be possible without all of you! With every regular priced shirt purchased through www.akumuink.com during March we donated one to charity. We're hoping to get some photos of the kids wearing our shirts within the next few weeks. Thanks again everyone!